Age Means Vigor For Rv Business

ELKHART, IND. — The recreational vehicle industry is forecasting increased sales as an aging America takes to the road for more of its leisure time activity.

``Our society is aging and an aging society is good for the industry because its buyers tend to be older,`` said Don Wright, a vice president of Holiday Rambler Corp., one of the major manufacturers in this north central Indiana area called the Detroit of the RV industry.

Not that seniors provide the entire market. Only about 30 percent of RVs are owned by people over age 55. Fully half of RV owners are in the prime years of 35 to 54. But sales are weighted toward the top of that age group.

``So as that half of the total owners ages, the market will increase,``

said Karen Mason of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association in Reston, Va.

Last year, manufacturers shipped 427,300 units to dealers, up 6.8 percent from 400,200 a year earlier. That figure was still considerably shy of the 582,900 units shipped in the industry`s peak year of 1972, Mason said.

The latest total represents a dramatic recovery from the industry`s 1980 slump, when only 181,400 vehicles were delivered as the impact of a recession, fuel shortages and rising oil prices dealt recreational vehicle sales a crushing blow.

Since then, sales have increased steadily every year for the $14.5 billion-a-year industry, a figure that includes RV rentals.

In 1987, the most recent year for which retail sales are available, the industry sold $8.3 billion worth of units.

``We`re getting back up there as interest grows in the RV lifestyle,``

Mason said.

Significantly, that interest also is being sparked by a younger age group, the Baby Boomers with families who find RVs tailor-made to their needs. ``With both parents working, families are finding it more difficult to match their vacation time,`` Mason explained. ``So they are taking shorter and more frequent vacations.``

Right now, the industry is bracing itself for the onset of spring fever, that period when the estimated 25 million RVers, as they are called in the industry, take to the road in their 8.5 million vehicles.

In an effort to promote the kicking of tires and ogling of motor home amenities, the association is joining dealers in declaring May 13-21 National RV Open House Week.

There`ll be such incentives as a two week fly-drive-cruise RV vacation for two in Alaska and other prizes, all designed to offset the impact of rising interest rates that industry experts predict will result in about a 6 percent decline in RV production this year.

Economists who serve as consultants to the industry believe that the higher interest rates will be combined with a short and shallow slowdown in the economy in the second quarter of this year.

However, they expect most of any 1989 drop in sales to be recovered by 1990 with shipments restored to 1988 levels by early 1991.

That would be good news for the 149,600 residents of Elkhart County, where the RV industry is the largest single employer, growing since the 1950s to represent 28 percent of the local economy.

According to Bob Kelso, president of the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce, there are more than 300 firms in the area that either manufacture RVs or supply parts to the industry. Others are involved in converting vans to leisure time use.

Phil Lux, president of Coachmen Industries Inc., a major RV producer, said that the industry`s biggest problem in this area last year was a tight labor market.

That shortage prompted Kelso to advertise last spring in a Davenport, Ia., newspaper that a total of 5,000 jobs of all sorts were unfilled in the Ekhart area, where manufacturing accounts for 56 percent of the work force.

Within three days, there were more than 300 inquiries. And within six months, 4,000 of the jobs had been filled. Today, Elkhart`s unemployment rate stands at 4.5 percent, down from the double-digit jobless rates of the early 1980s.

Because RVs are priced from $3,500 for a folding camper to as much as $500,000 for the so called Hi-Liner motor homes, the products have a wide appeal, Mason said.

On the high end are the opulent diesel bus conversions that offer such amenities as three-level living quarters, saunas, whirlpools and rooftop patios.

Most buyers are attracted to the in-between market, which includes a vast array of towable trailers and motorized homes, 26 to 40 feet long and offering a dazzling array of options that can turn a home on wheels into a single-family dwelling.

These include queen-sized beds, conventional and microwave ovens, showerbaths, double sinks, wet bars, refrigerators and freezers, washers and dryers, cellular telephones, TV sets (some with retractable satellite dishes), video recorders and stereo systems. They are built into hardwood cabinets so cleverly crammed into the relatively narrow confines of the units that they rarely intrude.